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Windows Vista, Mac OS X Grows, Firefox Loses Market

As Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista and Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X continued to grow their share of the operating system market last month, Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox suffered its biggest-ever drop in usage, a Web metrics company reported. By the end of May, Vista accounted for 3.74% of all operating systems on machines connecting to Net […]

As Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista and Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X continued to grow their share of the operating system market last month, Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox suffered its biggest-ever drop in usage, a Web metrics company reported.

By the end of May, Vista accounted for 3.74% of all operating systems on machines connecting to Net Applications Inc.'s clients' Web sites. The total share for Mac OS X -- which included older editions running on PowerPC processors as well as version 10.4, or "Tiger," on Intel-powered Macs -- was 6.46%. Vista was up about three-quarters of a percentage point from April, while Mac OS X was up a quarter of a point.

Their gains came largely at the expense of earlier versions of Windows, such as Windows XP and Windows 2000, although Net Applications' "Other" category, which is essentially Linux, also faded slightly.

So, is Microsoft still looking over their shoulders at the Mac OS user base?" said Vince Vizzaccaro, Net Applications' executive vice president of marketing and strategic relationships, in an e-mailed newsletter. "You bet."

Vizzaccaro also validated Microsoft's claim last month that it had shipped 40 million copies of Vista in the next-gen operating system's first 100 days. "People are adopting Vista at a fairly good clip," he said. "Those numbers certainly seem to add up."

Meanwhile, Firefox experienced it's largest slip in browser market share since Net Applications began tracking the open-source application in late 2004. Firefox's share fell from 15.42% in April to 14.54% last month. Its loss was mostly Microsoft's Internet Explorer gain -- IE 7's share climbed by 0.70% -- although Apple's own Safari browser also benefited. Safari's share was up 0.23% in May to 4.82%.

To complicate matters, both IE and Firefox face Apple as a browser rival on Windows; a week ago CEO Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's Safari for Windows. Net Applications, however, won't break out Windows' Safari numbers until the browser leaves beta in October.

"I downloaded it and immediately ran into several bugs, so we backed off," said Vizzaccaro.

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Deepak Gupta is a IT & Web Consultant. He is the founder and CEO of diTii.com & DIT Technologies, where he's engaged in providing Technology Consultancy, Design and Development of Desktop, Web and Mobile applications using various tools and softwares. Sign-up for the Email for daily updates. Google+ Profile.